To be a Helpmeet

Your foremost calling in the house is to be an helpmeet to your husband. He is to be the primary object of your affections, after the Lord. All the rest, motherhood and ministry, is to be subservient to this goal, to be a help meet unto my husband. When you lay down your own life you shall find life.

It seems that in Titus when instructions are given as to how to train young women, we are to train them AS IF they are going to marry and bear children. We know that some women are called to serve God in a single state, and we want our girls to be content in whichever state God chooses for them. We explain to our girls that there is a possibility marriage will not be their future, we also explain that training in that direction will still be very beneficial. Should they remain single, they will still operate in the same “realm” in many ways: in a home with their parents or a sibling; helping a family on the mission fields; working at a Christian residential home for the disabled, orphaned or elderly, etc. God has a wonderful plan to use each of these young women for the furtherance of the Kingdom.

As a child growing up in New York City I heard nothing about submission. I was married when I was thirty-two, and it was around that time I first started hearing about the idea of obeying your husband. I thought, “Oh, okay, I’ll obey him.” But I had no idea how unsubmissive I really was. It was not until later that the Lord showed me my attitudes, my controlling spirit and other destructive areas of my life.

In the beginning, God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness: and let them have dominion....

In the beginning, God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

Out of God’s deep well of infinite wisdom came these words. The man has a need, though made in the

image of God, though made in a perfect state. God saw deep into the heart of the man that He had made, and said, “I will make him an help meet for him.” A helper suitable for him. It seems that Adam must have had a sense of his need also, for he had just finished naming all the animals. Two by two they

As I have meditated on this verse the Lord has shown me some areas in my life that need attention. Let me share them with you. Perhaps you can benefit by my struggles, and hopefully you will not make the same mistakes.

Please read 1 Peter 3:1-9 to get the context of the verse. Now, allow me to quote from the Amplified Bible.

I remember as a girl thinking about what I wanted to do when I grew up. I thought maybe I could be a missionary—all the missionary stories we heard made it sound like an exciting adventure to go into foreign lands and lead heathen to the Lord! It would be nice to be a mother, I thought, to have babies to take care of and my own little house to work in.

Let me take you back 33 years ago when a young man and a young lady were courting.

They lived about 600 miles apart and most of their courting was done by letter. One day, after about a year of courtship, mostly by mail, the young lady was feeling very insecure. She looked at the problems in the home where she was born and in many of the homes of the students that she was teaching. As she looked, she realized that the wife and mother of the home held a very important key to making the home happy. She knew that it also depended on the man, but she was looking at her own role. She began to wonder if she could do her part to make a happy home. She knew this was God’s plan, but she had never had a good role model to watch closely. Could she do it? Was it better for her to stay single and teach school and be happy in the calling she was finding so fulfilling?

When someone asks you to give your testimony in front of a large crowd, don’t you immediately feel small and unworthy for the unspeakable honor it is to be a mouthpiece for God’s glory? Well, that is how I feel now as I sit here writing. No, I am not standing in front of you, but I do know that what I write will be heard by many. It humbles me.

I write as a young woman who is in the Father’s school and being taught many wonderful lessons. As an excited little child comes running home from school to tell her mother all the wonderful things she learned that day, I am also coming to tell you the beautiful things God is teaching me!

What is a “woman of influence”? Who is she? Where is she? Just what does her life “look” like? You are either a woman of godly influence or a woman of ungodly influence. Is there a woman near you that is in need of a godly influence upon her life? Maybe she is someone that needs help with her children, to catch up her housekeeping, who longs for a submitted heart. Our walk and salvation is connected in a beautiful working pattern as we carry on every day of our lives. Our relationship with our husbands, the way we raise our children, the way we keep our homes, our dress, our speech, our actions, our deeds are just some of the many examples to a world full of women who are hungry for godly influence.